A Very Deadpool Christmas
by Salazarfalcon
Summary: Pepper always remembers Christmas because she spends most of it at least a little bit tipsy and primarily annoyed. Next to her, Deadpool sips his eggnog with his pinky raised and nudges her in the thigh with an unpopped Christmas cracker. With a grimace towards the head of the table, Pepper grips the other end and pulls. Magpie!verse.


A Very Deadpool Christmas

* * *

Disclaimer: Nope, nope, nope.

* * *

Summary: Pepper always remembers Christmas because she spends most of it at least a little bit tipsy and primarily annoyed, especially when her grandfather has to get drunk every bloody year and go on a tirade about how he wouldn't have lost the last war if only everyone else hadn't cheated. Next to her, Deadpool sips his eggnog with his pinky raised and nudges her in the thigh with an unpopped Christmas cracker. With a grimace towards the head of the table, Pepper grips the other end and pulls.

* * *

AN: Hey there, everyone! I don't normally do things like this but this year, I'm making an exception! This is my first holiday-themed story, a silly little Christmas special spin-off from **Heart of a Magpie **that centers around Miss Pepper Potts El-Melloi**.** I hope you all enjoy it!

* * *

An El-Melloi Christmas is never anything to scoff at. The opulence is astounding, the food to die for, the company…well, that's where things get interesting.

It's always a nice opportunity to get dressed up and put on a show and the nice champagne doesn't hurt too much. Neither does the eggnog, which she can rely upon to have more alcohol than strictly necessary, homemade eggnog that's always thick and sweet and artery-clogging with an overarching flavor of the bourbon and rum that somebody (always Deadpool if she hasn't been the one to do it this year) added as an extra-special touch.

That's a tradition of theirs, one that they've had ever since Pepper was sixteen when he slipped her his mug on the sly and enthusiastically doctored up the one he'd stolen from her and she'd spent the rest of the evening basking in the gloriously warm, fuzzy feeling of being just this side of inebriated. So it's tradition, now, to walk into the house and hand off her coat, and start Christmas Eve by sipping a glass of champagne that she then proceeds to fill with eggnog.

She might care a little more about the disapproving looks coming from her mother if not for the fact that Dad's in his chair doing the exact same thing, and she's pretty sure that it has more to do with the impropriety of drinking eggnog out of a champagne flute than the prelude to an evening of drinking. Especially considering that she's seen the way that her mother makes the stuff and she knows full well that the stirring spoon gets dipped in a few more times than need be. She'll live.

The house is always a sight too, bedecked in gold and garlands that would be garish any other time of the year, and the twelve foot tree shines with brightly-colored baubles and lights and the animals made from paper and raffia that Pepper has insisted on adding since she was a little girl. They gave her grandmother fits, bless her dear, deceased heart and Pepper should probably care about that but she doesn't because the woman got _everything else_ she wanted _every year_; she could deal with not getting her way on this.

The festivities start early, around eight in the morning on Christmas Eve and Pepper tries to get there around ten so that she can get out of the family greetings but fails every year because there has to be something about this family, some sort of radar that pings the moment she walks through the door. Still, she tries.

Despite her insistence that she absolutely has to be adopted and cannot possibly be related to any of these people, Pepper nevertheless shoulders her bags in and adds her gifts to the sprawling tree skirt that takes up about half the room, ignoring the fact that there is a box or bag tagged with 'Uncle Deadpool' every year. Even though, every year, she swears that he gets nothing because he's been awful.

There's Aunt Bev who refuses to take her hat off indoors and Uncle Maurice who tries to wrangle everyone into a round of carols and fails, because _no_. There's her little cousin Jeremy who's six and already acts like an angry teenager except that he's cute as a button and it's kind of really adorable, and her older cousin Marissa who hasn't forgiven her yet for getting higher readings on her entrance exams when they were thirteen. There's Dad who never fails to descend upon her like a buzzard who's desperate for sane company instead of carrion and Mom, who bars the door to the kitchen and threatens to chuck fennel at anyone who so much as takes a step inside (_especially_ Uncle Maurice, who's allergic to fennel and always tests the threat).

And then there's Grandfather.

Grandfather is the least enjoyable part of the holidays to the point that all the alcohol in the world can't make his company any better. It's no different from when she was really young, except that _Pepper, your pronunciation's off_ has turned into _Pepper, your hair's getting too long_ and _Pepper, cease your incessant running through my house _has turned into _Pepper, you've gained weight again_. Sadly, _Pepper, you really must stop associating with that unruly miscreant Saber_ hasn't changed in the slightest and it is absolutely not her fault.

Everyone seems to think that they're thick as thieves and they're not, god, they're not.

It's not her fault that he's always the one to open the door when she arrives every year, no matter what time she shows up. It's not her fault that they're always sitting next to each other at dinner every year. It's not her fault that she opens the gift from him first every year, because for a guy who wears the same pair of boots day in and day out, he really knows how to pick out shoes.

Well, okay, she supposes that one kind of is her fault.

And okay, he might actually be her favorite uncle, even after Uncle Maurice. Not that there's all that much competition for favorite, considering the rest of the candidates. Uncle Bob's been buying her socks (not even cute socks, just ankle-high athletic socks) since she was three and Uncle Leonardo hasn't laughed once at anyone's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles jokes _ever_, and Uncle Daniel just stares at the lot of them and glares through the entirety. So there's really not much competition but it's the principle of the thing.

This is just too many magical people in one house for it to be healthy and Pepper spends most of the time leading up to dinner trying to escape from one relative or another until she inevitably ends up in her old bedroom, neater than it used to be but still decorated with the crisp posters of boy bands she used to like. God.

So she sits on her bed for about ten minutes of quiet until someone finds her and then she's off again. She texts Tony intermittently throughout the day because he's easily bored and has nothing better to do on Christmas Eve, apparently, though most of her side of the conversation is her grumbling without actually telling him anything and his consists of sending her instagrammed photos of his drinks. Pepper tells him more than once to not play with rockets under the influence and he doesn't listen, just like he never listens when she tells him not to do something.

Dinner never happens until it gets dark and Pepper takes more than a couple of minutes beforehand admiring the backdrop of inky sky and pristine white snowfall through the massive windows of the dining room. It's sticking again this Christmas and she stands there until Jeremy bumps into her and scowls and threatens to send her straight to the netherworld. She just tells him that she's already there and she's taken over, thank you very much, and laughs when he bristles and pushes past her.

The food's always amazing and Pepper can't help but smile into her mashed potatoes, buttery and simple in a decadent sort of way that tastes like home. Annoying home but home nonetheless, because there's Aunt Bev to her left and Deadpool on her right, and Aunt Bev's still wearing the ridiculous peacock hat and Deadpool's got the bottom of his cowl pushed up just enough that he can eat. She can just barely see the scarring snaking down his chin and she ignores it completely. He doesn't necessarily need to eat, Pepper knows that much, but she can't remember a year where he didn't and where he didn't have her father on _his_ other side.

_They_ were the ones who were thick as thieves, Pepper thought consideringly to her spoonful of potatoes, always had been. Even though Deadpool was half crazy—god, never mind, they were all crazy to begin with, it didn't even matter. He fits right in with this bunch of psychos. Growing up, she'd never seen anything unusual about a spirit summon being considered a family member –not until she went to the academy and found out that actually, it was _extremely_ unusual— even though she thinks most of it has to do with Deadpool just not leaving when he was supposed to and everyone else just getting used to him.

At the head of the table, Grandfather's already starting in on his yearly harangue. It never fails and Pepper tunes him out with the skill of the long-suffering.

Actually, it's more like she drowns both him and her irritation out with a sip of extra-spiked eggnog. The lot of them right down to cranky Jeremy can probably quote Grandfather's tirade word for word these days even though they all pretend (as they do every year) to be attentive and engaged and above all else, sympathetic. Well, Pepper tries but that's mostly because everyone's given up on her even pretending to give a damn and Dad has no room to talk because he's trying his best to not laugh at Uncle Maurice across the table who's building a log cabin out of Jeremy's green beans.

Right as Grandfather starts in about how he definitely would have won the last war if everyone else hadn't cheated (which is ridiculous, because outside of manipulating the mediator, there's really no way to cheat and you're lucky if you're still alive in the end), Pepper glances to her right. Deadpool's sipping eggnog out of his mug with his pinky raised and with his free hand prods her firmly in the thigh with an unpopped Christmas cracker.

That is a terrible idea.

It's one thing to sit there and be silently disrespectful but quite another to _make things explode_ at Christmas dinner.

Pepper looks away and feels a stronger, more insistent poke. She shakes her head and steadfastly refuses to look at him.

Until, of course, Grandfather gets to the part where _of course_ it was Deadpool's fault that they lost, and then she keeps every bit of her poker face as she reaches out and grabs the other end of the cracker to give it a swift yank. There's a sound like a foghorn amidst the traditional pop and then they all get showered in sparkles (red and gold to match the paper) and a plush alligator and a feathered pirate's hat come flying out. Unthinkingly, Pepper takes the alligator for herself and Deadpool sets the hat on his head, and she relishes in the sound of dead silence that meets her ears.

The first person to break out of their shock is actually Pepper's mother, who turns her gaze skyward and sighs and silently begins picking golden stars out of her corn casserole and that inspires most everyone else to start laughing. Everyone except Uncle Daniel and Grandfather, who starts bellowing drunkenly about how he gets no respect even though he's head of the family and how Deadpool has always been an ungrateful sod. That's where Pepper stops paying attention again and covertly extends her hand underneath the table, palm-up, and seconds later a red-gloved hand comes down and slaps it.

Neither of them look at one another even though everyone knows exactly who was responsible and Pepper continues eating, content with her 100% success rate in not letting Grandfather actually reach the end of his speech.

Dinner after that is an otherwise normal affair, and Pepper relishes in being full and a little bit drunk, and when she can she migrates to the sitting room, flopping on the couch next to Uncle Maurice and Jeremy. Even Jeremy's temper has been sweetened with good food and he doesn't protest when she curls an arm around his neck and reels him in to press into her side. The tree in the corner's huge and golden and sparkles more than any spell Pepper knows and the gifts underneath spill out over the skirt because it's not big enough, and later the kids will open the traditional Christmas Eve gift but not quite yet and Pepper knows that hers won't be chosen but that's alright, because she's not the aunt who gives the cool gifts but the one who gives the ones that can be appreciated later.

Pepper watches the children open a gift and trundle up to bed and then the grown-ups (the exclusive club of which she still has yet to be allowed to join, despite being over thirty) head into the drawing room. She stays on the sofa by herself, basking in the rare feeling of being absolutely happy with her lot and just watches the snowfall in the windows, watches the tree, hears the laughter from the other room.

Tomorrow will bring new annoyances and she'll likely spend most of it in a state of perpetual frustration at the sanity of her entire family but for now everything's okay.

The cushion next to her sinks down and she doesn't have to look up to know that Deadpool's come and sat down at her side. Much like Pepper, he's also never made it to the grown-up table but unlike her, he's never particularly wanted to.

Pepper's never had a Christmas without him and the memories come to her unbidden, of being given a bow and arrow set and promptly trying her best to shoot him with it, failing, and then resorting to manually sticking him in the forehead with the end with the suction cup. He'd managed (and encouraged) her shenanigans with an impressively good temper that had more to do with the way she terrorized her cousins than finding her particularly endearing. Later, he'd told her that it had been meant as a lesson in irony but all she could ever remember was the way he'd pushed her across the snow in the front yard, hands a warm pressure against her back, with an order to raise hell.

And then he'd proceeded to ruin her entire adolescence, but the crunch of snow under her boots always sends her reeling straight back to that bow and arrow and how satisfying it felt to chase her family round the yard in the first retaliation in her life.

Pepper doesn't realize that she's smiling into her drink until she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and she doesn't look sharp and smooth and put-together like she does whenever she walks into work but all soft edges instead like stripping off a costume.

"Merry Christmas, uncle," she says quietly, and clinks the rim of her eggnog mug on his.

Deadpool reaches out and musses her hair with his free hand.

"Merry Christmas," he agreed, "Long may we rage."

* * *

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT.


End file.
